The THRASS Phoneme Machine, which uses moving human lips to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) in hundreds of frequently used English words, is a key component of the THRASS (Teaching Handwriting Reading And Spelling Skills) programme pioneered by British Educational Psychologist, Alan Davies. It is an excellent resource for parents and teachers for learning about, and also teaching, the fundamental building blocks of English in an entertaining and fun way.
The value of the Phoneme Machine was recognised in the September 2007 edition of Independent Talking Points, the magazine of the Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice, in which Catherine Redmayne, the editor, wrote, "I would have paid just for some bits of this programme. Considering the whole thing was free to download, it was a wonderful offering from THRASS".
This latest version of the Phoneme Machine, version V6-CS, follows a request from Cued Speech Association UK to include a Cued Speech option, and is being developed by THRASS UK as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility Programme, which aims to improve the quality of life for the local community and society at large.
In Cued Speech, each sound (phoneme) has a visual representation. These sound-based units give deaf children access to spoken and written English. Cued Speech uses lip reading and eight hand-shapes in four different positions near the mouth to represent the 44 sounds of English. The combination of the hand shape, the hand position and the lip shape makes every sound of spoken language clear, so that 96 per cent of spoken language can be lip-read accurately.
In version V6-CS, the shapes, positions and movements of the hands will be displayed alongside moving human lips, with the cueing for each of the 500 basewords of English demonstrated in a video box.
www.thrass.co.uk/cuedspeech.htm
